


The Call

by Chiomi



Category: Moana (2016)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Demigods, Demisexuality, F/M, Slow Build, and the making thereof, gratuitous research, it's like a selkie story without any selkies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-09-07 05:32:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8785087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiomi/pseuds/Chiomi
Summary: The ocean is always, always calling to Moana.





	1. Motu Ika

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlwaysBoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysBoth/gifts).



> Should update semi-regularly. Vaguely themed around what makes a culture hero and how you court a selkie without stealing her skin. No one is actually a selkie.

When they make landfall at the first island they rediscover, Moana’s father thanks her, and without thinking she says, “You’re welcome.”

Maui is in eagle form above them but he still somehow manages to convey smugness, and Moana feels a blush rising. She isn’t going to be like him. She has an irrefutable place with her people, is one of them and not just a hero passing through. She helps pull the straggling boats to shore as the first arrivals set off to explore the island.

It’s small, but lushly green. They spend a lunar cycle there before it becomes clear that it can’t sustain them long-term: not enough freshwater, no game.

It’s a relief, almost, when the island proves unsuitable for any kind of settlement: they pack up and take to the water again, and the constant call in Moana is quieted.

The second island is populated. Their accents are slightly strange, but they recognize Maui from their own stories and their accents are still mutually intelligible, so Moana’s people are able to trade. Her father wants to bring her to negotiations with the Chief of the island and his handsome son, but Moana sits with their Wayfinder guild instead. These people hadn’t wholly abandoned voyaging while Te Fiti was heartless, and they show her how to tie together maps of prevailing ocean waves in return for her story of navigating to Te Fiti.

When their water and stores are replenished, the people of Motunui load up again - though not quite the same. To Moana’s surprise, one of the girls she’d grown up with has fallen in love with a girl from the island, and there’s a girl from the island who’s fallen in love with one of the Motunui voyagers and is joining them.

Moana understands the call to go far more than the call to stay, but as long as her people are happy, that’s all that matters.

The third island they reach is almost as large as Motunui. There’s no calm lagoon to fish, but the leeward part of the island has fish so plentiful and unafraid that they call the whole island Motu Ika. They stop there long enough to make the minor repairs that are more easily accomplished on land, and she takes the opportunity to update her stick charts and use the sand to draw the things she can’t explain in words about wayfinding. Despite only a month more experience, she hasn’t managed to bring anyone else to her skill level yet. She’d put it down to her own inadequacies as a teacher, but  _ she’s _ never peed in the water to gross anyone out and tease them about currents. She does her best as the camp inexplicably gets more entrenched, and it seems she’s too focused, because it feels like the next time she looks up there’s a half-built wharenui.

She’s learned to be circumspect when she needs to, so when she corners her father it’s not in the marae, for once. “Why is everyone acting like this is where we live now? We’re voyagers!”

He puts a hand on her shoulder, stilling some of her emphatic gestures. “We were voyagers once, Moana, and we’re rediscovering what our ancestors did, but we can’t live on the sea. It’s just not practical. Even if we wanted to change everything about our way of life indefinitely, two people are expecting. Would you want them to have their children on a ship?”

That gave her pause. When had they even had time to -? “I guess not,” she said reluctantly.

“Besides, you’ll get a chance to teach more people how to navigate the waves!” He beamed at her like she’d ever be happy on land again.

Moana let out a sigh, and it felt like her life was leaving with it. She had an inescapable place with her people.

Maui spots her when she trudges back into what’s going to be their new village. “It looks like your adventuring days are over for now. Seems like a good time to go see who else needs a demi-god to be their hero, right?”

“Sure,” she says listlessly. As she passes him, passes into view of her people, she straightens her shoulders. She doesn’t - can’t - resent them for staying in one place. They’re her people. They might not feel the same inexorable tug of the tide, but they’re hers nonetheless. She turns to look back at him and her father side by side. “Stop by sometime, okay?”

In reply, he turns into an eagle and flies away.

She doesn’t see him again for fifteen years.


	2. Maui's return

Moana is the only woman her age on Motu Ika who hasn’t had any children. She’s the Chief’s daughter and the head wayfinder, so it’s not quite expected of her, not yet, but it still leaves her just slightly apart. The mothers all have a look about them that she doesn’t share, either - she still looks younger, and darker from all the time she spends on the water around Motu Ika instead of in the shade of the coconut trees. She knows, too, that some of the wildness in her must show on her face in unguarded moments. But she can’t help it - she feels like this life isn’t quite real, is just a stopping point before they go back to the sea. They’re voyagers. The sea is where they belong. She’ll stay and help and lead as long as they want to be on this island, but she hopes they’ll remember that they, too, love the sea.

She takes to paddling around the island on what’s essentially a board. No one worries that she’s taking off entirely - a concern she knows her father harbors when she’s on a real boat - and when she really can’t stand the stillness anymore she can stand up on the board and face it into the waves the way she would an outrigger. She’s still close to the land, but it makes her feel whole to focus entirely on the water that way. The ocean is a friend, the ocean chose her and has listened to her, and down in her heart Moana belongs to the ocean as much or more than she belongs to her people.

She’s straddling her board and facing the dawn when she sees Maui again, a great whale bursting from the ocean right where he’s limned by sunset. He stretches up and up out of the water and turns into a familiar eagle with a familiar scream. Moana turns to paddle back to the shore and meets him on the beach where he’s human-shaped again, leaning on his fishhook and smiling. “Moana!”

“Maui,” she says, dragging her hair back and free so the damp strands won’t cling to her neck. “It’s been a while.”

He shrugs, then picks up his hook and twirls it. “You know how it is - you spend a thousand years trapped on an island and there’s a lot to catch up on. How long has it been, anyway?”

“Fifteen years,” she says, and lets the silence settle between them as he falters in the swing of his hook. She raises an eyebrow at him. She doesn’t want an apology, because he’s Maui, he’s a trickster and always has been and he’d have been so desperate for adventure on their quiet contented island that he’d probably have ruined everything. She doesn’t want an apology, because he belongs to everyone, not just the people formerly of Motunui. It would be nice, though for him to acknowledge that he’s been gone a long time without even stopping by.

“Huh,” he says. “Explains why you’re taller, I guess.”

She hefts her board over her head and sets off down the path. “Come on, everyone will be excited to see you.”

He walks behind her a moment, then swings around a tree on his hook and hangs on it, face right in front of her. “Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

“Not yet,” she says firmly.

He drops to the ground with a disconcerted thud. “Why not?”

Because she doesn’t want to hear this more than once. Because she needs time to adjust to how his return will change things, to sort through her feelings. “Because you have a story to tell, and everyone deserves to hear the story, especially if I’m leaving again.” Because her people will need a reason, and deserve to have a say so they don’t feel like she’s abandoning them.

“I wouldn’t just come back if I needed you to come with me! I’m Maui - I’ve never needed help.”

She smiles at him, unable to keep it hidden. “Except to get off that island, to get your hook back, to get back to Te Fiti -”

He turns into a lizard and scurries up the tree. Moana laughs, and her steps are lighter. She tucks her board back into its usual place and walks into the marae. Maui drops from a tree above her, turning human-shaped on his way down and landing like thunder. Moana would have jumped in surprise if she hadn’t been expecting it - but she had been, because even her short months with Maui carved every detail of him into her memory.

No one else was expecting him, though, and the whole village startles and stares. Maui swings his fishhook up and over his shoulder, keeping his bicep flexed as he holds it in place. He grins, puts his other fist on his hip, and holds the pose long enough for everyone to admire him. Moana stands next to him and lets him have his moment.

Little Nikau is one of the first to get over his surprise, toddling over on deceptively fast tiny legs. He doesn’t slow as he approaches them, just continues full bore until Maui has to scoop him up before he can crash into his knee. “Maui!” Nikau says excitedly, hands already all over Maui’s tattoos.

“That’s right, buddy,” Maui says, utterly delighted. “That’s from when I lassoed the sun.”

The village relaxes into welcome, and Moana skirts the crowd starting to form around Maui to go tell her parents that their dinner plans have changed.

In the firelight after the impromptu feast, Maui tells the village about his adventures in the last decade and a half. They’re dramatic tales, about encountering demons and swimming the deep and visiting peoples who’d been isolated during Te Fiti’s time without a heart, lost wayfinding completely instead of holding onto the knowledge in hope. But as dramatic as the tales are - as heroic as he makes it sound to introduce another people to wayfinding again - Moana can’t help but notice that none of the stories have accompanying tattoos. Eventually, though, as the fire starts to burn low and the children have started to yawn, he gets around to his point. He makes sure to catch Moana’s eye as he starts the story, letting her know this is where she comes in.

She brings her knees to her chest, hugging them there to keep her heart properly caged. She loves her people, loves that she knows everyone on this island and all their hopes and heartbreaks. But there’s a bird in her chest that sings always of the sea, and right now it’s battering against her ribs to get out.

“There’s an island far out past the sunset,” he says, his hand drawing the through the air like if they follow his gestures they can see what he sees. Moana is hardly immune, and stares blindly out to where she knows the ocean is beating softly against the shore. “On it is one of the great treasures of our people. But a demon saw this treasure, and was jealous of its beauty, and he wreathed the island in fog so thick you can’t see the stem from the stern of even the smallest canoe. Only the greatest of wayfinders can hold firm to their direction in that fog, because it billows and confuses you and you can’t tell day from night.”

“How’d you defeat the demon, Maui?” Nikau asks, too tired to lift his head from where it rests on Maui’s knee but still rapt.

Maui leans down, even more of a giant compared to the toddler, and his eyes spark with reflected fire. “Ah, but I haven’t yet, kid. Because I’ve traveled the whole ocean on my own and taught wayfinding to the most determined and brilliant of every island, taught boat-building to those who’d kept the knowledge but lost their canoes. For a thousand years the ocean couldn’t be safely crossed, but I’ve brought back all the knowledge that’s been lost. I’ve learned almost everything there is to know, but I’m still not the best wayfinder I know.”

The cadence of his voice is compelling enough to just drift on, and the rhyme and cadence of it is that of just another story, so it takes a moment for Moana to catch up. He’s straightened and is looking right at her over the fire. His eyes glitter like Tamatoa’s carapace.

“Oh,” Moana says, and the sound drops like a stone into the lagoon of silence that has overtaken the marae.

“Moana, will you come with me to help me find the way back to Motu Tea so I can defeat the demon?”

“Yes,” she breathes without thinking. She glances at her father, then, and he looks - yearning. Her mother looks stricken. She looks back at Maui, and he looks triumphant.

She springs up and walks away from the fire, into the cool quiet of the trees. Unerringly she takes the shortest path to the water, to the small cove that shelters their boats.

She watches the water lap at the shore and wishes - wishes that Maui had come back sooner, that he hadn’t come back at all.

Leaves swish behind her as someone passes them, and Moana turns around. Her mother smiles gently. “Your father wishes he could go with you.”

“I shouldn’t be going at all - I’m needed here.” Moana presses her side against her mother’s side, and the warmth of her is a comfort.

Her mother transfers whatever she’s holding to her other hand and wraps her arm around Moana. “You are loved here, and valued, but I think that we would be fine while you went on an adventure.” She nudges Moana with her hip. “Your father and I aren’t as old as all that.”

Moana puts her head on her mother’s shoulder, feeling fifteen years old again. “You looked so unhappy when I said yes.”

Her mother takes a moment, gathering her thoughts. “I want you with us, but I want you to be happy. So I won’t ask you to stay, just to come back.”

Moana takes a deep breath, then straightens and nods. “I can do that.”

“If you hurry you can still catch the tide,” her mother says, and holds out the oar she used the first time she set out. It’s just slightly too small for her now, but it’s still inscribed with Maui’s fishhook and heart. 

Moana bites her lip, but takes it. A talisman is a talisman after all, and her mother wants her to come home. “I should start packing.”

Her mother smiles. “Tui has already started. Too bad Heihei isn’t around anymore, right?”

Moana laughs, and they start walking back to the village.


	3. Setting Out

They leave on the morning tide instead of stealing away in the night. The whole village turns out to send them off, which Maui takes as only his due. It makes Moana shy, though - setting out on a voyage has, in past, been either with all of them or direst secret. Their supplies are packed and waterproofed, and Moana has her existing twig-maps and the supplies to make more when Motu Tea is again navigable.

She says goodbye to her mother and father as Maui charms the children one last time. Then they have help pushing out from the beach, enough that they have momentum when she raises the sail and it luffs for a moment before she pulls it taut to the light breeze. As they pull away from the island and into the open water the breeze strengthens, and Moana says, “You’re going to need to give me some direction.”

“West until sunset, and then I’ll point out the stars,” he says, laying down to trail his fingers in the water. “No animal companion this time?”

“I figure in a pinch you can always shapeshift,” she teases him. It feels natural to fall back into that, even with all the time they’ve been apart. The breeze propels them forward, a turtle swims below, and the sun tracks higher in the sky. It’s quiet, the only sound around them the water against the boat, the creak of tension in the sail and mainsheet when the wind shifts. Still, it has to be addressed eventually. “Why did it take you so long to come back?”

Maui sits up and shrugs his massive shoulders, then waves her away from the stern so she can have a break. Not that it’s much work on a clear day and a calm sea to keep them traveling straight. “I knew I’d come back eventually, and I figured if you needed me or had an adventure to go on you’d send the sea to find me.”

“No, I -” Moana stops, then addresses the ocean. “Would you have done that?”

The water rises higher, touching her hand.

“Huh,” she says.

“So I went to go see every island where I’d been their hero before,” Maui continues. “That took time - I’m a pretty popular guy - and then I just kept finding new stuff. Like I told everyone last night, there were adventures, and I missed out on a thousand years of them when I was stuck without my hook.”

Moana leans back on her hands and studies him. “You look exactly the same.”

He grins at her. “What, you thought after a thousand years,  _ fifteen _ is what would do me in? I’m a demi-god, Moana. I’m going to be my best self forever.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “That’s not what I meant.”

He looks genuinely puzzled.

“Your tattoos.”

He looks down, and mini-Maui on his chest shrugs. “I haven’t earned any new ones. Sometimes I don’t for a while.” 

“Think this is an adventure that will earn you one?”

“What, worried about the danger?”

It feels like they’re circling each other, testing each other’s boundaries. It’s not the kind of interaction she ever has at home, where her parents are the only ones who tease her, and they’re much gentler. She shoves her hair back over her shoulder. “I thought you must be, since you wanted backup.”

His face softens to an almost unwelcome degree. “You really are the best wayfinder I know.”

Moana rolls her eyes. “I’m good, but you’ve been doing this for how many years? And you said yourself that there are lots of islands who didn’t forget everything while they were bound in place.”

He shakes his head, wild hair tumbling around him. “Fine, don’t believe me. It’s enough that you came.”

Moana looks out over the water, the endless freeing expanse that glitters like all the treasure she’ll ever need. She can’t imagine any treasure that would matter more to her people than the fact that they’ve reclaimed the sea. Though - well. If she’d asked, they probably would have had ideas. None of them seem to miss the sea the way she does, content to stay in view of land. She wonders, not for the first time, if Grandma Tala had felt alone with her yearning before Moana had been born. It’s not the kind of thing they’ll ever get to discuss. “So how far to Motu Tea? And what was its name before the fog?”

“I hadn’t named it,” he says. “There was only me and the demon on the island, and it didn’t need a name before I had to name our destination. As to how far - probably a week if we don’t get any storms.”

He’s probably cursed them by saying that. Moana stretches out in the shade of the sail, though. “Okay. If I’m going to be navigating all night, wake me up at sunset.”

The motion of the boat over the waves lulls her more effectively than any lullabye had when she was a child, and Moana is dragged down into her nap by peace like an anchor. She doesn’t dream; on land she sometimes dreams of the sea, but there’s no need for it here when it’s half a breath away. She naps deep and peaceful and wakes on her own when the texture of the breeze changes with encroaching dusk.

Maui passes her some water and food in silence as they wait for night to fall. With no hills and trees to trap the light, night falls quickly. The stars come out one by one, and then Maui shows her the stars she’s aiming for. Moana fixes the stars and their current bearing in her mind, then leans over to trail her fingers through the water. This part of the ocean isn’t on any of the wave maps she has so far, but it will be by the time they go back.

“If you turn into a bug we’ll go faster,” she says.

Maui gives her an inscrutable look, then turns into a beetle and scurries down below.

Moana breathes in the ocean air. A part of her is grateful that he came to take her on an adventure, excited to be on the ocean on a quest, but a bigger part of her is still wondering why. And he’s a trickster and evidently doesn’t want to give her a straight answer. So she’ll be his wayfinder, but it’s probably better if she tries not to get attached. He’ll only leave again after they’re done, and if she doesn’t get attached she won’t be enraged and bereft when he does.

The breeze shifts, and Moana lets out the line to keep them on a steady course.

The moon rises, making the stars near him pale in shyness. The night waxes, and the breeze shifts again so they’re sailing on a beam reach, skipping across the waves like a stone across the surface of a lagoon. Moana doesn’t even mind the hair always making its way into her face, because the whole exercise just feels glorious.

She leans over to trail her fingers in the water again, and it feels like the ocean itself is welcoming her back out into its wilds. It’s one of the best nights she’s had in years.

And then the sun comes up, driving a different wind, and suddenly they’re sailing close reach to a cloud bank that obscures the whole horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The weather's sort of iffy, though I can justify it with diagrams. But, since no one wants diagrams, we'll just say that any meteorological peculiarities are magic.


	4. The Storm

“Maui,” Moana says, calm but pointed. “I may need your help.”

There’s a flash of magic and then he lands, light-footed, on the deck. “What is it?”

She spreads her hand, palm-up, and gestures at the impending storm.

“Oh,” he says, drooping at the sight. “Any way we can outrun it?”

Moana eyes it dubiously, considers their bearing, and says, “If we ran in front of it we’d end up days off course. If we sail at broad reach, we could maybe get past the edge of it and only be about a day off course? It’s a pretty big storm.”

He runs both hands over his face. “I shouldn’t have said anything about storms yesterday.”

“Since you’re a demi-god and trouble apparently follows you around? Probably not,” Moana says, her tone the driest anything will be around them for days. “So what’ll it be? Run, sort of run, or hold course?”

His grin is like the sudden glint of sunlight off a wave. “What, scared of a little rain, princess?”

She makes a face at him. “Still not a princess. And I’m willing to hold course if you are. We’re not likely to be blown as far off course.”

Maui nods and gets them both breakfast, then starts checking over the boat to get it ready for the storm. There’s not much to do: they’ve only been gone for a day, and there’s not much mess to make. He throws her an extra length of line, though, and it nearly blows away in a sudden gust of the rising wind. Moana catches it, though, and sends him an irritated look. “What’s this for?”

“To lash yourself down,” he says, gesturing vaguely at the stern. “No point bringing you along at all if you get yourself lost at sea.”

Moana shakes her head at him, but lashes herself in all the same. The ocean would bring her back to the boat no matter what, but she still doesn’t like the idea of being thrown clear and losing all control. She keeps an eye on the storm as it encroaches, a wall of rain driving darkness before it. The wind rises steadily, and Moana trims the sail. They can’t afford a broad reach: it puts them too much in front of the wind, and they’ll be pushed off course more than they can afford. A beam reach has them sailing perpendicular to the wind. It’s faster, just a little bit, and the wind is strong enough that they’re still gaining some little distance from the storm.

Not enough, though, not nearly enough, since the storm is advancing faster than they’re drifting sideways. It looks like it’s swallowed the whole horizon. As the wind starts to feel wetter and angrier, starts to fill their sail with more malice, Moana can’t help but laugh. This is the kind of reckless sailing she’d never dare with her people, too much speed and darkness falling too fast.

Maui raises an eyebrow at her from where he’s lashed himself to the mast.

“It’s an adventure!” She grins at him, and he grins in answer.

The clouds swallow the sky, all but a distant patch of blue. The wind is strong enough that the float is riding low, low in the water. Reluctantly, she asks Maui to lower the sail partway. It’ll cut their speed, but it’ll also give her the control she’ll need. The oar is starting to buck in its position as tiller when the first raindrops fall.

In their wake, the sky is dark as ashes. The storm is too much to sail through. They won’t escape, and the sail might be damaged. The rain comes upon them in a torrent, and Moana has to yell to be heard. “Lower the sail all the way and come back here!”

Working quickly, they get the sail put away. Then Maui unties himself, and Moana sees him throw the line back to her in the first flash of lightning. She quickly lashes his line beside hers and looks up to start gathering the line to help him walk back securely, but he’s already there tying another knot.

Thunder cracks. She passes him the oar; his massive strength will serve better than hers to ride this out. The storm has made the ocean dark as night even though it’s still morning. The rain comes down hard, fat cold drops soaking everything. Their cool viciousness seems to infect the sea, and the waves rise.

Maui works to keep them from spinning out of control. Any ambitions beyond that are futile. Even if they could raise the sail at all, the storm is driving them, and the only light to navigate by is the lightning that rends the sky.

It seems like they’re in the storm forever. Moana finds herself leaning into Maui even as he has to stretch and move his arms to paddle. He might be as cold and wet as her right now, but he’s the only source of warmth to hand, and the cold rain is sinking into Moana’s bones.

The storm doesn’t last forever, though.

It ends far more abruptly than it started, a wall of rain relenting into a sprinkle with sunlight clearly visible and close to hand. Then it leaves them behind, blinking in the sun.

Moana takes inventory: no injuries, nothing apparently damaged. She unties herself and coils the line, judging the time and their position by the newly revealed sky. It’s only barely midday. She stows the line, feeling the ache of tiredness in every joint now that she’s moving again. “I’ll raise the sail, you steer?”

“Sure,” Maui says, checking the float. “Then you should sleep.”

The wind is gentler in the storm’s wake. Maui lets the sail luff only a moment before trimming the line, but he has them at a broad reach. Moana frowns to herself and trails a hand in the sea. It’s warmer than she feels, even with the sun on her back. “Haul it in a bit closer. If we make our way upwind a bit, we’ll be back on course in no time at all.”

“Sure thing, princess,” Maui says like he’s just humoring her, but he brings them to a close reach anyway.

She’s too tired to argue. Moana lays down, spreading her hair in the sun so it’ll dry, and drops into sleep.

When she wakes, Maui’s caught a tuna and is finishing discarding the offal. She ties a strand of her hair around itself to get it out of her way. “So the fishhook’s good for more than magic?”

“What?” Maui asks, looking at her even as his hands keep working the sharp knife.

She looks pointedly at what she assumes is dinner.

“Oh,” he says, and looks sheepish. “No, I actually have another hook I use for fishing.”

Moana nods, then digs in their supplies for salt and inamona. She’s not sure what his plans had been, but it’s her favorite way to have tuna. She gets a bowl and her own knife and takes a filet that Maui passes her and cuts it up into the bowl. It’s strangely companionable, making dinner with him, and they’re more in synch than she’d expect.

She looks up from sprinkling the fish with inamona and finds him watching her. She raises an eyebrow, but he just shakes his head and passes her more tuna. He’s neatly stripped the skeleton and is holding the last two fillets in one hand. She takes them both for efficiency’s sake and he throws the skeleton far away. When Moana’s tossed the fish together with the salt and inamona, she packs the seasonings away in their watertight container and sets the bowl between them.

The eat in silence at first, intent until the food is mostly gone. Moana sits back, content. “Tell me a story, Maui.”

His dark gaze is filled with amusement when he glances up at her. “You sound like that kid.”

She smiles. “Nikau? I guess.”

“Do you have any of your own?”

“Children?” Moana is incredulous. She’s too busy for - well, she’s not. Not really. If she wanted, she could have made the time to find someone and court him and let him court her. If she’d felt any sparks with anyone, she could have long since provided the next generation of Waialikis. But she hasn’t. Hasn’t wanted to, hasn’t felt sparks for any of the men or women on her island. She thinks any sparks she might have felt have long since drowned in her love of the sea. “No.”

He doesn’t push. Instead he tells her about the land to the east, where the mountains rise higher than the clouds, so high the sun refuses to warm them and they are always cold.

It sounds like something out of myth, but Moana is sailing with a demi-god to go fight a demon, so she doesn’t quibble. She and Maui switch positions so he can gesture expansively with his descriptions and she can plot their course by the emerging stars.

That easy camaraderie sets the tone for the next few days. They weren’t blown irrecoverably off course, and the winds are with them, so it’s only another four days until Moana sees, far away on the horizon, a bank of fog so impenetrable it might as well be stone.


	5. Motu Tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They reach the island, and the source of the fog.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am on uswe.tumblr.com. Updates will hopefully not have as much of a gap going forward.

“There’s an outcropping to the right,” Maui says, “and it curves around in a crescent. Another one curves in from the west, but not so far, so there’s a narrow entrance to the harbor. The beach is at the far side of the harbor, and when we hit the shallows I’ll be able to run up.”

Moana nods, coiling loose line. “Are you going to fight the demon then?”

He shakes his head. “No. His home lies inland and up in the mountain in a cave. Better to make camp and go tomorrow morning when the fog will at least be bright. Besides, then it’ll be light when we sail away under a clear sky.”

Moana tucks away the neat coil of line and gets her bearings as firmly as she can. She presses her skirt into her thigh over the malu that tells the story of her as the navigator that brought her people back to the sea. She can do this. Assessing the looming darkness barely delineated in the heavy fog, she feels her apprehension fall away into determined calculation. She can do this. She just needs to hold her course in her mind and steer the canoe along it. She adjusts her oar just slightly, and can feel everything click into place. This is the right course to get them to shore. The ocean streams past her paddle, reassurance in the way the tension translates up to her hand.

They sail into the fog. At first she has no problems seeing the water past the bow, but the world gets smaller, enclosed in grey. It gets so she can’t see the top of the mast clearly then so she can’t see the bow. Even Maui a few feet in front of her is wreathed in it. She’s sailing blind, and it should feel precarious, but she can still feel her bearings.

“Lower the sail a little,” she says to Maui, because even though she still feels confident, caution will keep them in one piece.

He does, and she trims it again, and she can feel the change in the water as they sail into a harbor. The wind cuts, too, and their speed decreases. The balance of the boat shifts as Maui hops into the water and drags it up onto the sand. Moana hops down onto a beach she can’t even see, and it’s damp from the fog. “This treasure better be worth it.”

“Of course it is! And besides, isn’t it great to be on an adventure again?”

Moana makes a noncommittal noise, because she won’t say anything to imply that she isn’t devoted to her people. Leadership is its own adventure. It just - okay, being out on the open ocean might scratch a deep-seated itch.

There’s no possibility of lighting a fire with the way the damp clings to everything, so they set up camp almost entirely by feel. Moana has a hard time falling asleep, but she manages, and then wakes up to a grey only slightly lighter than what she saw as she fell asleep. A breadfruit comes flying at her through the fog, from which she deduces the fact that Maui’s awake.

“Are you coming to watch me fight the demon?”

Moana smiles to herself; it’s like she’s 15 again. “Not to watch, no, but I’ll help you.”

“Okay, then let’s go!”

Moana shoves her hair back, still waking up. “Give me ten minutes.”

Fives minutes later, she’s ready to go. The boat’s secured, and she has a knife and her oar. The oar won’t be any use at all if it’s damaged in a fight, but it feels right to take it with her. “You know the way?”

“I always know the way,” says Maui. Moana can’t see his face clearly - or really at all - but she can imagine his expression of affronted arrogance. It makes her smile.

“Sure,” she says. She takes his hand, though, so she won’t lose him in the fog, and he leads the way inland.

The fog gets thicker, and it’s like a kind of blindness. When Moana presses her eyes closed tight, though, she sees colors, little starburst of red and green on the insides of her eyelids. With her eyes open there’s only an oppressive dim grey. Opening her eyes wider does nothing, and the air is so damp and heavy that it doesn’t even sting to leave her eyes open for minutes on end. Maui’s hand is warm in hers and the path is solid beneath her feet, but those are the only sensory details that feel real. Even the sound of their footsteps seems distorted in the density of the fog. It’s so thick it seems as if there should be some physical resistance, walking through it. There’s not. Or not really? It’s a bit like a dream. The only things solidly real are the dirt under her feet, the oar in her hand, and Maui’s hand in hers.

They make their way up and up, and the fog billows like smoke around them. It smells of dust and somehow also dryness, even though it’s damp on her skin. It doesn’t smell like normal fog.

The ground levels out, and Maui squeezes her hand and then drops it. “Mokomoko! Come out and face me!”

There’s an ominous hissing that sounds too deep to come from anything living. “How dare you come back after what you did,” comes a low, rumbling voice.

“After what I did,” Maui repeats incredulously, stepping forward. Moana follows him, because otherwise she’ll lose all sight of him. “You hid the whole island and all of my hard work and made it nearly impossible to get here!”

Moana brushes up against stone, and realizes they’ve stepped into a cave. There’s very little difference in the light. As they step deeper, closer to the voice, the fog thins, until they’re in darkness broken by visible spots of luminescing mushroom on the wall.

A lizard emerges from the depths of the cave, bigger than any real lizard she’s ever seen. Its skin is patterned in grey and black like something never meant to walk under the trees.

“You defiled my home,” the lizard says, eyes blazing fire. They look especially vivid in the darkness of the cave.

“Okay, no,” Maui says, making a chopping motion with his arm. “This can’t have been your home before it was my island. I pulled this thing from the sea fair and square.”

Moana glanced at him, because he hadn’t mentioned that this island was new, that he’d only just pulled it up. Getting back to pulling up new islands seemed like the kind of thing he should tell her, if not with all the other stories he’d recited in front of the fire then at least when they were on a boat alone for a week. If there were new islands, it was almost an obligation to find them, to map them, to tell others.

The lizard - Mokomoko - flickers his tongue out in agitation. “I made it a home before you created a monstrosity, so I have to have some kind of claim.”

“It’s not a monstrosity,” Maui bites out, seeming to swell with frustration. “It’s a treasure and I should beat you for implying otherwise.”

Before he can escalate, Moana slaps her oar onto his chest. It distracts him, and he looks down to see the heart he’d carved over the tattoo of her on his chest, the one that rests right over his living heart. It stops him, not just physically, but with the reminder that Moana stops things without bloodshed.

“If Maui lifts a new island from the sea for you, would you lift the fog here and promise not to do the same on the new island?”

Mokomoko’s tongue flickers out again. “Who are you?”

“I am Moana,” she says, feeling peculiarly unafraid under the attention of someone powerful and likely to dislike her for the company she keeps.

“My wayfinder,” Maui says.

Mokomoko sends another scorching glance at Maui before focusing on Moana. “Why do you care?”

“I usually prefer a peaceful solution when it’s possible. I also want to be able to tell other people how to get here, and they won’t be able to if Motu Tea is hidden completely in fog.”

“Fine,” he says, and drops from the wall to land on all fours on the floor. Mokomoko apparently doesn’t feel the need to be on a level to strike at Maui’s face anymore. “Another island with a connection to Lalotai, and I’ll leave this one completely alone.”

Moana smiles at him, but keeps it from being too triumphant: she needs one more thing. “We need the fog gone before we can even leave, Mokomoko. I can’t get out of the harbor if I can’t see.”

“Fine,” he says again, more grudgingly. “Maui, do I have your word?”

As Moana looks at Maui, she realizes that she still has her oar pressed to his chest. He’s made no move to dislodge it, and she’d forgotten she was holding it. She lowers it to her side.

Maui sighs massively. “Sure, fine, whatever.”

Mokomoko doesn’t say anything, but skitters away into the dark. Maui shrugs and starts back towards the mouth of the cave. Moana follows, and vows that she’s not going to do quite so much following on any other adventures with Maui. He leads her into entirely avoidable nonsense.

When they reach daylight, it’s noticeable as daylight. The fog’s still impenetrably thick, but it’s thinning, and Moana can see the path ahead.

They walk back to the beach as the fog dissipates. By the time they hit sand they’re walking through bright sunlight. They both come to a stop, for wildly different reasons. Maui gestures proudly, beaming as bright as the sun overhead. “Isn’t that a treasure? I worked really hard on it, and it was going to be totally wasted if the whole island was shrouded in fog and no one could see it.”

“That’s the treasure you were talking about,” Moana says flatly, too stunned to manage an interrogatory tone. “The treasure for all of our people that was worth sailing blind through a narrow passage and that you were prepared a demon for.”

Maui puts his fists on his hips and puffs out his chest proudly. It makes him look exactly like the statue standing at the farthest part of the crescent encircling the harbour.


	6. Up from the sea

Moana packs up the few things they’d unpacked as Maui gets fresh water, fulminating on his definition of ‘treasure’. She secures the boat, then just stares at the statue. It’s huge, and bold, and unmistakable. She sighs. “What were you even thinking?” she asks Maui as she hears his footsteps approach behind her.

“It’s beautiful,” he says, still proud.

“I thought when you said treasure you meant something we could trade, or that would bring us knowledge. This is just . . . you.” She gestures vaguely between them, unable to adequately convey how deeply she now realizes that she should have expected something like this.

He looks at her from under lowered brows, his eyes deeply shaded but still glittering. “Are you saying I’m not a treasure?”

Feeling young and silly, Moana sticks out her tongue at him.

He laughs, the sound booming out across the harbor.

Moana smiles, too, then ties back her hair. It’s time to set out. “So how quickly can you pull up an island?”

He starts pushing the boat out into the water, and shrugs his massive shoulders. “A few hours, once we find a good place.”

They have enough supplies for days, still, and won’t have to go back. Good. Her father hates her leaving, always does. It’s why she’s stopped going on as many of the trips between Motu Ika and Motunui. She’s tried to strike a balance all of them can live with. The ocean always calls, though, and she’s felt more herself, more like she’s fulfilling her life’s purpose, out here than she ever has on land. Given that she knows exactly her place on land, exactly her purpose, it’s a powerful calling out here, reverberations of magic that settle into her bones. She wonders how much of it is Maui’s presence, and watches him out of the corner of her eye as he scrambles aboard.

Maybe some. But he’s not all of it, just a good excuse to listen to the magic in her blood. And she doesn’t have to be taupou in front of him, just wayfinder. Being taupou, the chief’s daughter, isn’t any kind of hardship, and she’s good at it, but she’s always very aware of her mediating and teaching and leadership skills as learned things. She came to wayfinding later, and has had to work harder to hunt new knowledge down, but wayfinding is what feels like was born in her blood.

Moana takes them out of the harbor with hardly any effort, now that she can see, and gives a parting glance to the statue of Maui. It’s skillfully done, a good representation. But the sheer gall of calling it one of the great treasures of their people - well, she should have expected it. “Which way?”

He smiles broadly at her, like he’s about to share some new feat of magic. Mini-Maui on his chest gestures emphatically at one of his tattoos. Oh. Right. Demi-god of the wind and sea. That had to be useful at least sometimes. “Run in front of the wind. It will take us where we need to go.”

She lets out the line until they’re running in front of the wind, and somehow it still takes them around the island in a lazy arc. She wonders why it couldn’t have carried him into Motu Tea’s harbor, but doesn’t wonder very hard: gifts are conditional. Moana herself is one of the worst of her people at navigating on land, and Maui’s shapeshifting, at least, could quite tangibly be taken from him.

The wind takes them into the west, unerringly so despite the current Moana can feel beneath them.

Maui takes over steering for a while, and Moana enjoys the sun on her skin and the sparkle on the water. Everything is unrelenting blue, but life itself still seems more vibrant on a boat. “How will you know when we’re reached a place that will work?”

Mini-Maui puts both hands palm-up next to his shoulders and shrugs dramatically. The tattoo version of Moana does nothing - Moana has yet to see her move, and kind of assumes she doesn’t. Maui himself shrugs less dramatically than his mini counterpart. “I’ll feel it.” He frowns slightly. “You might, too. It’s like a stillness under the surface of the ocean, a place where it’s already prepared to make way for an island and flow around it.”

“No part of the ocean is really still, though,” she points out.

He looks at her impatiently, and she shifts, acknowledging it. There are degrees and degrees of stillness, and it’s not like she’s never been becalmed. She’s used to being the one most in love with the ocean, most in tune with it, and she thinks she still might be, but Maui has more experience.

Moana turns her attention to the water, feeling the nuances in it as they skim over the surface, trying to intuit when they’ll stop. It’s not for a while: the afternoon sun is glaring them full in the face by the time Maui’s face closes off. His attention has all gone somewhere both internal and distant, and Moana watches his face, trying to follow. Usually these days she’s too well-mannered to stare, but being out here is more than one kind of freedom. She’d have to be pretty unpardonably rude for Maui to even notice, she thinks. There’s something seductive in that, though she knows it’s a bad idea to get used to it. She’ll be home soon enough. In the meantime, there’s the sea.

Hours later, she feels some shift in the water, and so isn’t quite surprised when Maui says abruptly, “Lower the sail.”

She lowers it, and he brings them around, stopping their forward progress. Maui stows the oar, and Moana raises an eyebrow at him inquiringly. “All I need you to do is stay out of the way,” he says.

“Okay,” Moana says easily, and twists to roll onto the iako. She might as well relax. Her hair, of course, ends up all over her face and shoulders. She shoves it back and finds Maui watching her, an unfathomable look in his eyes.

“This might take a while,” he says.

Moana just nods and props her head up on one hand. She’s not quite sure why he’s hesitating.

Then he casts his hook into the sea and starts to dance, and she understands. His footsteps roll like thunder through the rest of the canoe. She can feel the vibrations in her bones. She can feel the echoes moving through her and beyond, into the water. He starts to sing, too, and the words drop through the air, through Moana, and down through the water. It leaves her breathless.

The sensations become bearable, become something she can breathe through over the next several minutes, but Moana’s still spellbound. He dances for hours, indefatigable, before anything starts to happen.

On Motunui the ocean had spent most of its energy on the reef, and only lapped at the sand on the shore. On Motu Ika the ocean crashes on the shore, a reassuring sound Moana falls asleep to happily. Out on the ocean’s surface, a soft susurrus and a creak of rope are most of the noise the ocean makes. Here and now, though, the ocean howls.

It’s a joyous and chaotic noise, and it arrives as the precursor to anything else. Moana has the feeling that this sound was never meant for mortal ears, but somehow she can stand it. She reaches down to touch the surface of the water, which seems to be trembling in anticipation here in the sheltered space between the ama and the canoe. The water tingles and sends a shiver of energy up her arm. She leaves her fingers trailing and looks at Maui, still dancing. Sweat’s pouring off him, soaking his hair, but the dance is reaching some sort of climax. His voice has risen to match the ocean’s howl, and it seems like the only thing that ever possibly could.

Maui comes to a stop with a great stomp of his feet, one that rolls over Moana and down. The water responds under her fingers, trembling more strongly and then moving with purpose. The howling of the ocean reaches a fever pitch, and the water rushes away from some unseen central point.

The island rises slowly, but still more quickly than it seems the earth should ever move, and Maui’s hook sits at the very peak of it. The water pours away from bare rock that even before her eyes starts sprouting vegetation.

The rise of the island pushes them away, and it feels for a few minutes like they’ll be pushed away forever and the island will never stop rising. But it does, eventually, stop, ending somewhat smaller than Motu Tea and with a less elevated peak.

Unasked, the ocean carries them onto the shore, and Moana steps, dazed, onto sand. A coconut drops to the ground in front of her; the vegetation racing to propagate, life already permeating the island. She picks it up, and it doesn’t even smell like salt. She turns back to Maui, sitting on the beached bow of the canoe and drinking water. “This is amazing.”

He stops drinking long enough to paste some smug over his exhaustion. “Glad you think so.”

“Do you have to tell Mokomoko? Do we have time to explore? Oh, you probably don’t want to. Is there fresh water?” Moana finds herself thoroughly dazzled by the idea of being the first person to ever step on this miraculous new island, by the idea of exploring something that hadn’t even existed a day ago.

Maui waves a hand vaguely. “There’s only so many ways out of Lalotai. He’ll hear about it sooner or later. I have no idea what’s here besides the entrance, but I’m going to have a nap while you explore.”

He lies back on the canoe, not bothering to get off and drag it further out of the water. Moana doesn’t think there’s any point: no matter what the new tides here will be, right now they’re here with the cooperation of the ocean, and she doesn’t think either the ocean or Maui will strand her here.

She walks inland, and it feels like everything should still be wet, considering how recently it was underwater, but it isn’t. The earth is soft and dry under her feet and the coconut trees stretch high into the air, filtering the late afternoon sunlight as if they’ve been doing it forever. She finds a spring running clean and clear and fresh, and it should be impossible, but it’s not. Moana drinks her fill and laughs, giddy in her amazement. It’s so easy to forget the true extent of Maui’s powers, but she thinks it’ll be a while before she does so again.

She continues up the island, and the trees give way to bare black rock. It cuts at her feet as she climbs further, but she can see her goal, so she pushes on. Maui’s hook gleams even brighter in contrast to the darkness of the rock, and it’s embedded deep. There might not have been a physical line on the hook, but it still definitely hauled the island up by force. Moana tries in vain to free it, but can’t get it to budge. After a few minutes she gives up, because all she’s doing is frustrating herself, and sits down to lean back against it and look out over the ocean. It sparkles in the sun, the way it always does, and Moana lets out a great boneless sigh at how much she loves it.

The sun wends its way toward the horizon, and Moana reluctantly concludes that she needs to go back down to Maui before it’s too dark to see where she’s walking. She could never lose the way with the ocean as her destination, but the paths here are brand new and might be confusing in the gloaming. As she gets up, she puts a hand on the hook to steady herself, and it tips loose, making her stumble and nearly fall. She stares at the hook narrowly, but it doesn’t move again. She tries to pry it free from the rock again, and this time it comes easily to hand, or as easily as anything that heavy can. She slings it over her shoulder like Maui does and walks back down to the sea.


	7. Motu Taniwha

They spend the night on the new island. When the sun starts to paint the sky in vivid shades of morning, Moana asks, “Does it have a name?”

He looks at her very steadily, long enough for her to look up from her breakfast and then back down. “Not yet.”

“Motu Taniwha,” she says. “Since it’s for Mokomoko.”

“So be it,” he says, and leans forward over his breakfast so that his hair swings like a curtain between them.

She frowns, uncertain. He’d implied that she should name it and she had. Well, whatever. If he has a problem he can use his words. He’d seemed shocked when she’d brought down his hook the night before, but had neglected to explain then, too. She gets to her feet and trudges back up to the spring, determined to fill their water stores before they leave.

The island’s even more lush in the morning light, and she marvels at it. She knows how long it takes greenery to take root on exposed rock, and this rapid growth has to be one of the gods’ finer gifts. She brushes her palm against the trunk of a tree on her way down, and it’s reassuringly solid and real to the touch.

Maui’s cleaned up the campsite by the time she gets back, and she loads the water on the boat. “Home, now?”

“Back to Motu Ika, yeah.” Maui pushes the boat out from the shore: it doesn’t take much, since they’d never pulled it higher.

Sailing back is harder. Well, almost anything would be, after the ease of the day before. There’s also a sense of something hovering invisible between her and Maui. She doesn’t like it. For the last decade even the most ephemeral of sensations have translated clearly into fast decisions about seacraft, into insight about some problem she has to solve for her people. But this invisible, intangible thing between them - it doesn’t feel like anything she’s familiar with. It also feels like, beyond mere unfamiliarity, it holds something Maui is keeping from her deliberately, and she likes that even less.

They reach Motu Tea with the sun streaking its last light up into the sky and make landfall in the gloaming. They don’t need to sail overnight when there’s an island right here. She and Maui make camp, still speaking only as necessary. Moana’s frustration at not knowing what’s between them is starting to itch.

“Tell me a story,” she demands over the fire when it’s burning low.

Mini-Maui leaps gleefully into action to illustrate the story, even before Maui himself settles on one. Moana wonders what it would take for her own figure on his chest to come to life. It’s not an urgent question, though. Nothing seems very urgent: this is an adventure wrapped up in itself, and she can’t see how it could spill over. She bears no responsibility except when she takes the helm. And Maui isn’t expecting that of her tonight - demonstrably so, as he tells the story of bringing forth fire and all she has to do is be carried away, the itch under her skin quieted by the sound of his voice.

The next morning they set out again, and then its days and days of open ocean. One of the prevailing currents that should be making their journey swifter isn’t as strong as Moana expected - not as strong as her stick-maps indicate, either. She’ll figure it out later, she promises herself as she tacks as close as possible to the wind. Maui lounges, lizard-shaped, on the mast. It feels profoundly right to be out on the ocean, salt spray in her hair and wind in her face, days of almost-solitude ahead of her. Moana sighs happily.

Once the sun goes down, though, there’s a problem: the currents don’t match where the stars say they are, which means Moana’s carefully maintained maps are wrong, somehow.

Or, no, not somehow. Now. She looks at the markers that indicate where islands lie and everything clicks into place the way it sometimes does. Moana knows the ocean. She can feel it. Of course it bends around land. Obviously it bends around land. That includes new land, just-raised. She throws her map out into the ocean as far as it will go, because it’s almost useless now.

It comes back, of course, with a slightly reproachful lap of a wave against the side. Maui cracks one lizard eye, then cracks back to human. “What’s the problem, princess?”

She scowls at him. “The currents have changed.”

He raises a single eyebrow at her. “They do that, I’ve heard.”

“No, not -” she gestures wildly “-not because of tide, or temperature. Motu Taniwha means that all the water has to flow around it now, so my maps aren’t right.”

Something gleams in his eyes, and she could swear he almost smiles. She narrows her eyes at him, and the gleam sinks out of view; not gone but hidden. “I guess you’ll have to redo them,” he says. “How much traveling do you think that’ll take?”

Moana flops down on the deck and stares at the sky. She’s fully aware that she’s being overdramatic, but it’s the only way - it feels like her heart is trying to escape her chest again, and she has no idea which way it would fly. “I can’t,” she says. “Not all the time. Not even most of the time.”

He sits next to her, and she’s very aware of his presence, of the scant inches the narrow deck and her own sprawl have left between them. “Your dad still seems pretty on top of things.”

She tilts her head to look at him, and he’s staring out at the horizon. “You missed me,” she says, with some surprise.

Maui shrugs his broad shoulders, but doesn’t look at her. “I didn’t mean to be gone fifteen years.”

Moana hesitates, then circles back to the heart of things. “I can maybe go on two or three trips a year. Any more than that would be too much time away from my people. You could stay, too.” She’s aware that that’s too much, aware of it before the words even leave her mouth. There’s no reason for him to stay, not for a friendship that he’d forgotten about until needed. And it feels like - no matter how much she’d want him there, he doesn’t belong solely on Motu Ika. He doesn’t belong to them. Her people are hers, and she’s theirs, but Maui is everyone’s. “A week to visit now and then wouldn’t be the worst, would it?”

Some of the tension goes out of him, and he leans back, putting his weight on his hands against the deck. “No, it wouldn’t be the worst.”

-

Moana sails them home to Motu Ika, and there’s a sense of triumph in the return, a surge of old remembered pride. She glances at Maui and reminds herself: he didn’t earn a tattoo. She didn’t help save the world. It was an adventure on a scale - not human, not really. But it wasn’t the grand scale her first adventure with him had been. The victorious echoes of homecoming are the same, though. She shares breath with her mother, then her father, and she’s glad to be home even as she’s reluctant to leave the sea behind as they walk inland to the marae. It’s not the physical distance - the peak of Motu Taniwha was significantly farther from the sea - so much as the knowledge that she won’t be going back, not immediately. The current maps aren’t urgent, and the ones that are more important she can have her students update on the trading runs.

Maui follows her into the marae, Nikau on his shoulder and several other children clustered around him, a tiny but enthusiastic honor guard. As they go through the village, people look up and stop their work and their conversations, looking delighted to see her back. 

Around the fire that night, Maui tells their story, making it sound much more impressive than it was. The way he tells it, Moana is a master of diplomacy and Mokomoko is canny, greedy, and monstrous. It all feels much grander through the lens of his storytelling. When he gets to the fog lifting, Nikau asks, “What was the treasure? Moana, was it cool? Did you bring it back?”

Maui looks over at her, firelight reflected in his gaze. She smiles at him, then addresses Nikau. “It wasn’t the kind of treasure you bring back. But now it’s there, shining in the sun, and anyone who sails past can see it.”

“What is it, though?” Nikau demands impatiently.

“Maybe you’ll find out when you’re old enough to sail your own boat,” she says, then looks around the fire. Almost everyone else is still some degree of curious, but they aren’t asking outright. She doesn’t want to tell them: it would undermine all of Maui’s storytelling and make any glory in it crumble to ash. She smiles reassuringly. “Right now, though, both of us are exhausted from our journey, so you’ll have to forgive me for ducking away early to get some sleep.”


End file.
